SHEE, IT'S A SECRET

Everyone loves secrets, right? Well, I have one of the biggest you'll ever hear....

But first we have to set the stage for the big reveal. The "stage" is called the news-of-the-world. News has been tumbling out from every corner of the planet from the atolls in the Pacific to the mountains of the Urals, from the deserts of the Middle East to the plains of the American Middle West. Only now it's all right there smack dab in your face 24/7. On television...in the newspapers...on the Internet...on your cellphone, IPad, and whatever whatchamacallit you just bought yourself for Christmas.

Lot of ways to describe this experience. Information. Education. Interpretation. Yeah, they sound about right. Only they're not entirely right. Shock might be a better definition. The palpable shock of your sensorium being hit like heat-seeking missiles. One after the other after the other.

Admit it -- you're pretty much left dazed. Overwhelmed. Another natural disaster, another bank crisis, another job crisis, another terror or war crisis. So much going on so relentlessly. The suppressed sensation: Oh God, I hope they can handle this one!

This is where the secret comes in: "They."

Whether we live in a dictatorship or a democracy, we the people intuitively assume -- presume! -- there is always a "they" in charge. A mayor, a president, a pope. Oh really...? Picture this example. You're riding on your morning commuter train as usual. Gradually you sense the car is speeding up. More and more so that it seems to be rocking on the rails. Everyone around you keeps reading their morning editions, but you're concerned. Actually, you're becoming downright scared. And so you quietly get up, move through the car, then the next, then finally reach the driver's cabin so you can ask the person in charge for yourself: "What's going on...?"

Now here's the secret, friends. You open the cabin door...and no one's in there...!!!